White House to Silicon Valley: Help!

Silicon Valley lobbyists are headed to the White House this afternoon for a full court press on the foundering immigration bill. President Bush wants help from high tech to push a bill the industry has been none too happy with.

The once high-flying tech lobby was appalled when the bill came out of closed-door White House-Senate negotiations earlier this summer, seemingly without regard for the industry’s wish list. The Valley didn’t get the big increase in H-1B visas that it wanted and it got clobbered by a change that removed employer sponsorship of green cards.

The tech industry quickly sent in its big guns — led by Google and Microsoft (CEO Steve Ballmer has been personally lobbying) — to try to turn things around. Now the industry has everything riding on an amendment to get more H-1Bs and allow employer sponsorship of permanent migrants.

The Valley has stumbled since its heyday in Washington during the NASDAQ bubble of the late 90s, when it enjoyed an “ask and you shall receive” reception by both parties. Now it’s getting awful press on the extrarodinary use of H-1B visas by Indian outsourcing giants Infosys and Wipro, which have been gobbling up big quantities of the scarce temporary visas to grab outsourcing work. Not to mention a video from a Pitsburgh law firm seminar that advised, “Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker,” prompting calls for a Labor Dept. investigation.

With the immigration bill facing a minefield of two dozen killer amendments this week, any one of which could bring the whole edifice crashing down, the White House decided it needs the tech industry after all. The question is, exactly how much clout does the industry still have?